


5:27

by ImperialEvolution



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Asexual Character, Bastardisation of Vague Religious Imagery, I promise, Internalisated Aphobia, M/M, Mild romaticism of blood, Mutual Pining, Non-Explicit Sex, This isn't as horrible as it seems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 03:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20828327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperialEvolution/pseuds/ImperialEvolution
Summary: “You have been weighed on the scales and been found wanting.”- Daniel, 5:27Or; Warren likes to think he's a simple man with simple wants, but Daniel is far from that.





	5:27

Warren likes to think he is a simple man. He wants people to work and he wants them to listen to him. And Jacobi has always had the tendency to let himself be his tool, to unfurl his wings and work for him. That’s all he really wants from him.

(It’s far from their first mission, and it’s certainly not the first time Jacobi’s killed someone. Ayrton and Markovnikov share that particular trophy. He still thinks about them, Warren can tell, his thousand-yard stare and the way he pales at the blood on his hands.

But still.

Watching Jacobi dismantle someone as easily as he’d dismantle a bomb, that’s not something Warren ever expected to see. It’s the red wire he cuts, the one in the guard’s neck, with the switchblade Warren thrust into his hands not half an hour before.

The guard crumpled instantly, folding in on themself like fucked up origami, staining Jacobi and the wall and half the floor a crimson ichor as they went down.

It’s the blade, the one Jacobi holds onto for dear life with red seeped hands, that most catches his attention. Blood spills onto his hands, burying itself under his fingernails and into the cracks of his skin. The blade flashes as Jacobi turns to him, and the metal is nothing to his oh-so-bright smile.

And Jacobi has never for a second seemed like prey to him, he’s never been some doe-eyed angel, even from the first, but Jacobi’s canis grin sends a chill of recognition down Warren’s spine in a way he’s never felt before.

Jacobi runs a blood-stained hand through his hair, the way the light hits it turning saccharine red. He flicks his switchblade shut, still grinning. “What?”

Warren indulges him with a wolfish grin of his own. “Good work, Jacobi. Clean the blade when you’re done or it’ll be the last thing you see.”

Jacobi rolls his eyes and hooks his knife on his belt. “Yes, sir,” he drawls with that lazy sarcasm Warren knows so well.

Something tightens in his chest. “Look alive, Jacobi, we still have work to do.”

It’s a special thing to watch Jacobi work. Not, of course, that Warren has any idea what he’s doing—he was a law major, what in the genuine _fuck_ does he know about bombs?—it’s still a genuinely mesmerising thing to behold. It’s his hands, how they move, quickly, precisely

Warren gets the impression that HR would be so far up his ass is they knew how much time he spent staring at Jacobi’s hands. Luckily for him, he plans on dying before telling them a damn thing about himself.

“Right,” Jacobi says, flicking a rather unceremonious switch, “time to make ourselves scarce before it does it for us!”

Warren tries to suppress a smirk. “Let’s go.”

And here’s the thing, Warren has worked with ballistics experts in the past, this is not his first rodeo, as it were, but none of them have ever shone in the way Jacobi does.

Anyone can overload a circuit to make a spark, but no one can weave earth-shaking force into a delicate tapestry in the way Jacobi can.

Jacobi’s fire brands the night, light refracting off Jacobi’s eyeshine and the urge to hold his hand sucks the air from Warren’s chest.

Jacobi turns to him, grinning excitedly, his canines sharper with the light of war fuel burning behind him. His hair is black with blood and he looks so very, very alive.

“Man, I wish I had sunglasses, that would’ve looked so cool!”

He’s an idiot. He’s a fucking idiot and Warren wants, violently, to take his hand.

Instead, he turns to the car, if only to hide his smile. “It really wouldn’t, Mister Jacobi.”)

He’s proud of him. Of course he is; he was a mess when Warren found him and he trained him and he built him up until he was the best, the best recruit he’d seen in his entire run as director of strategic intelligence. Of course he’s the best; he is his, after all.

Not in any way that matters, but he’s still _his_.

Jacobi is, first and foremost, a weapon; one he made with his own clawed, scarred hands, a monster of his own design. Warren likes him that way, with his teeth bared, his knuckles bruised and bleeding, and there’s no shame in that.

(It’s the darkness, really, that makes him feel that much closer. And it’s nothing really, just a nasty lookin’ stab wound at Jacobi’s shoulder blade, ain’t nothing a couple of sutures can’t fix. His knuckles are busted and nearly purple with bruising, white and clenched on his knees as the needle threads its way through his skin.

Really. It’s nothing. Jacobi’s sat between Warren’s legs on the floor, his back nearly pressed into his chest. He keeps hissing whenever the needle enters his skin, his hands mechanically clenching and unclenching. Warren would be finished much sooner if he stopped goddamn _fidgeting_.

“Stop moving,” he mumbles absently, flicking the back of his ear.

Jacobi growls, turning his head to glare at him, but Warren interrupts before whatever biting remark he was going to spit his way can leave his lips, “What did I _just say_, Mister Jacobi?”

His jaw tightens. “Yes, sir,” he whispers, turning back to glare at his hands.

Warren wishes he wouldn’t do that. Whisper, that is. The world seems to shrink to the space between the two of them, Warren’s bloodied hands and his back, his smooth skin and the freckles that scatter across his shoulders.

Even when slicked in a sheen of blood, even with the angry gash, he’s still a wonder. It feels a sacrament to touch him like this, to have him so close. God, he’s barely even touching him and it still feels so terrifyingly intimate.

He has one particular freckle, right at the bridge between his neck and his shoulders, where it joins with a series of freckles that look remarkably like scorpius, a whole constellation imprinted into his skin. He wants to touch it so badly.

“Sir?” Jacobi breathes when he still hasn't moved, the needle in his hand shaking ever so slightly.

God, he wishes he wouldn’t do that. All he can think about now is wrapping his arms around Jacobi’s torso and pulling him into his chest.

“Only a few more stitches, Jacobi,” he says, instead. And then, “You’re doing remarkably well.”

He doesn’t say anything more after that. Warren bites down on his tongue and screams silently until he ties the final stitch. They’ll dissolve eventually, but they’re gonna hurt like a bitch in the meantime.

“Take some painkillers,” he orders, not quite daring to move, for fear of slipping and pressing himself into Jacobi’s skin.

There’s a handful of seconds that seem like an eternity where Jacobi doesn’t move, still sitting in between Warren’s legs.

And then he stands and Warren can breathe again. He doesn’t put on his shirt—it’s caked in blood and they’ll probably have to burn it—instead, he grabs one of Warren’s Goddard t-shirts, carefully shucks it on.

Warren lies awake that night and stares out the window, mapping Jacobi’s freckles amidst the stars.)

Even so, even at his most monstrous, he doesn’t stop being human in the same way Warren does.

Warren has never for a second pretended to be anything other than a wolf in a very nice suit, something markedly malicious in its origin. He’s never pretended to be good.

Neither has Jacobi. He just is, he can’t help it. He can don his snarling, flickering bonfire of a monster anytime he pleases, but he’s still _human_ underneath it all, still wants what’s best. Despite the rotted and horrid things they do, he still believes in good, in love.

(Dirt is still clinging into the insides of Warren’s fingernails, mud and blood still caked into the crevices of his hands. The back of his throat still tastes like dirt, but his head can’t move past how pale and still Maxwell looked, her hair streaked with blood.

Jacobi, for his part, isn’t looking much better than Warren. His hands are shaking at his side, fingers drumming frantically against his thighs. His skin looks ashen, washed out against the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. His combat boots leave scuff marks against the floor.

He paces and paces and paces. Jacobi has never been one for suppressing action, and he looks like he’s going to sink his claws into someone’s chest, with blood clinging to his eyebrow from the gash in his forehead.

Warren catches his wrist as he walks past him for the thousandth time. “She’ll be okay, Mister Jacobi,” he whispers, locking his gaze with his.

Jacobi sighs, finally untensing his shoulders. “I know.”

Warren doesn’t let go of his wrist.

“Go home, Jacobi,” he orders, squeezing where his pulse thrives under his touch. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

Jacobi prickles. “You think I don’t know that? I’m not leaving her.”

Warren draws back his shoulders. “You have to leave. There’s nothing more you can do.”

Jacobi rips his hand from Warren’s touch. “Bullshit! I’m not going anywhere!”

Warren exhales heavily, clenching his fist, silently mourning the loss of Jacobi’s body heat. A change of tack. “I’ll call you if anything happens, Jacobi.”

“Sir! Listen to me!” He draws himself together in one quick inhale. “Maxwell is my best friend, I love her. I am not going to abandon her. So stop asking me to. I don’t care what you say, I’m_ not leaving her._”

And Jacobi looks at him, his eyes narrowed, stormy and dark. God, he looks tired. Something about it all hits Warren’s windpipe with an aluminium bat.

He’s no stranger to how… close he and Maxwell are, their entire dynamic is poisoned, laced sweet with their blatant _affection_. And Warren would love to say that he hates it.

And yet.

Something locks tightly in his chest and Warren can’t breathe without stuttering. “Okay. But you should get some rest, Mister Jacobi.”

Jacobi hums noncommittally. “I wouldn’t count on it, sir.”

The silence that follows is oppressive, heavy and desolate, broken only by the sharp click of doctors’ shoes on the white tiled floor.

“Jacobi?” he breathes, skimming his fingers softly along his bicep. “Are you gonna be okay?”

Jacobi sighs, leaning closer. “Yeah, just…” He steps into his space, resting his head against his collarbones. “You’ll stay, too?”

Warren freezes. It takes everything he has not to press his face into his hair or wrap an arm around his waist, every ounce of self-control not to hold him.

But he doesn’t push him away.

And he doesn’t push him away.

He can feel Jacobi’s breath shaking on his skin, something human in the subtle shaking of his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Warren whispers, “I’ll stay.”

Jacobi stops shaking when a doctor finally reports on Maxwell’s stable condition, when Warren’s hand slips to fit at this waist, pulling him infinitesimally closer.

Every second spent with Jacobi pressed against his skin is a lifetime.

It’s a long, _long_ night.)

He believes in Warren, too. For reasons that escape him entirely; Warren has never been good and he’s never _loved_ him. A crush, maybe, an indulgence at best, but Warren just isn’t capable of that kind of attachment.

(Warren doesn’t care about Klein.

Maxwell doesn’t care either, she’s made that abundantly clear to both him and Jacobi. Mostly to him, though, when Jacobi is sleeping in the backseat of the car, his phone still buzzing with goodnight texts from Klein.

“He’s just…” Maxwell sighs, finishing her rant. “He’s so _happy_.”

Warren has never known Jacobi to be happy outside of the three of them in all his years working with him. It’s not a problem, really, it’s just… strange.

“And you aren’t happy for him?” Warren suggests mildly, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel.

Warren isn’t happy for him. He doesn’t need to be, he’s not Jacobi’s _friend_, he’s his boss. It’s no business of his who Jacobi fucks. Fucking _Klein_ can give him a damn sight more in that department than he ever could.

Really, what he’s trying to say is that he doesn’t _care_.

He shouldn’t care.

“Of course I am! Jesus Christ, sir! I’m not a fucking psychopath, of course, I’m happy for him!”

Warren sets his jaw, and Maxwell falls silent, barely daring to breathe. They stew in a long silence.

Warren still wants him, though.

“You don’t seem bothered,” she says, eventually.

“I’m not,” he responds far too quickly. “It’s not my business who Jacobi sleeps with.”

Maxwell makes a face. “Gross! I didn’t need to think about that, sir.”

Warren can’t fight his smile. “Sorry. As long as it doesn’t interfere with his work, I don’t care.”

“But he’s your friend.”

“He’s my subordinate,” Warren corrects. “As are you.”

Maxwell turns to stare out the window, fiddling with the hair tie on her wrist. “Right.” Her voice sounds tight.

He takes his eyes off the road for a second to watch her.

“I miss him,” she says, very very quietly. Warren would have sworn he’d imagined it if it weren’t so out of character.

And it’s not even that Jacobi’s sleeping with Klein. It’s the way Klein kisses Jacobi’s forehead and trails his hands down Jacobi’s arms. It’s the way Jacobi leans into Klein’s space when they talk.

The bruises at his neck don’t make Warren jealous—a little concerned, maybe, but not jealous.

Jacobi doesn’t look at him the same anymore.

“I miss him too.”)

Even if he were—which he’s _not_—he wouldn’t be good enough for him. Not in any theatrical sense, not on any grand melodramatic scale, he just wouldn’t be.

They want different things, alike in dignity though they are. Jacobi wants his hands at his wrists or his throat, biting kisses at his neck, harshness and pleasure in one fatal moment. And Warren…

(He’s weighed the options and if the price to pay for Jacobi’s soul is his hands pressing him against the wall and his lips at his neck then it’s a price he’s willing to pay.

Warren grazes Jacobi’s pulse with teeth and Jacobi throws back his head and moans, his hips canting against Warren’s. Warren’s stomach twists, any endearment at how cute Jacobi sounded quickly felled by the grind of his hips.

He breaks away for a second because he can’t breathe. It’s supposed to be a second.

But Jacobi looks at him, his eyes wide and wondering, and he smiles, just the smallest quirk of his lips and Warren can’t _breathe_.

So he kisses him instead, gently taking his jaw in his hand, careful not to take more from Jacobi than he needs. And his heart is racing and his head is spinning, he’s so close, he’s so damn close.

Jacobi responds like a wildfire, biting at his lips, his nails dragging at Warren’s shoulders, tugging him closer and Warren remembers exactly how far away he is.

And then Jacobi tugs off his shirt, and then the bed and then Jacobi’s beneath him, and Warren is left wondering how this happened so fast.

Warren starts to move on autopilot. The empty threats he growls against his skin are horrible and hollow, but Jacobi breathes them in with shuddering breaths anyway.

It’s all shot, reverse shot, if this then that. The kisses Warren trails across Jacobi’s skin aren’t sculpted for a lover, they’re forged for a mark. And Jacobi is not a target, not some meaningless fling to coil around his finger and crush in his fist. It shouldn’t be like this. It’s Jacobi, it’s supposed to be different.

There’s something incredibly beautiful about having him, undone and unravelled, but it’s not the sex.

He hates the taste in the back of his throat.

And then Jacobi’s nails dig into his back for the last time and that’s fine, it’s pain he can take.

“You’re loud,” Warren mumbles eventually, watching the gentle movements of his rising and falling chest.

Jacobi’s breath finally catches up to him and he laughs softly, rolling over, their noses almost bumping together. “Is that a problem?”

Warren considers this for a brief moment. “No, I suppose not.”

Jacobi hums, shuffling forward to press his forehead against his collarbones and Warren’s heart skips.

“Oh, woah,” he says, lifting a hand to press into the flesh above Warren’s heart.

“What?”

“Your heart is racing,” he mumbles, looking up at him, wide-eyed affection incarnate. Of course it is, the treacherous thing.

“Yeah,” he chuckles nervously, his stomach twisting in on itself. His arm settles around Jacobi’s waist, tugging him further into his chest, his touch electric.

“Are you alright, Kepler?”

Warren kisses him again, peppering Jacobi’s face with as many brief brushes of lips as he can afford. They’re both grinning as he pulls away. “I am now, Jacobi.”)

Warren wants him at his side, in his home, a kiss to his forehead and gentle hands at his waist. He wants Jacobi in a way he hasn’t wanted anyone in his life, ferociously and permanently. If he were anyone else, he’d cut him off, dispose of him before it gets worse.

And he wants him, oh _God_, he wants him.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come yell at me about various podcasts @imperial-evolution on tumblr or drop me a comment. Have a lovely evening!


End file.
